In this tutorial, we’re going to install PoE on your Chromebook (believe it or not).

The only issue will be whether or not your laptop can handle running the game (potato or not).

Sound good? Let’s get started!

Last updated: 1/31/18.

Why would you play Path of Exile on a Chromebook?

Path of Exile (PoE) is one of the best free MMORPGs of all time!

If you don’t really care about what makes this game awesome, feel to skip this section and go to the next one!

If you’ve played the game before, you already know that it’s an awesome game. Grinding Gear actually listens to community input and has been evolving the game to meet players’ demands without destroying it.

It’s often compared to World of Warcraft as being one of the best MMORPGs in 2018. And WoW is often titled the best MMORPG of all time, though it’s a paid subscription-based game.

The game is completely free to play with no pay-to-win advantages. It does have microtransactions (or else how would they make money?), but they’re purely cosmetic and don’t offer anything that would give a paying player an unfair advantage over a free player.

Though if you like the game, you should definitely support the developers by buying an awesome skin here and there.

Being such an awesome game, it’d make sense for any PoE fan (you, probably) to want to run this game on their Chromebook. Whether you want to play it at school, work, or out in public to get your dungeon on, your Chromebook would be the perfect candidate.

So, without rambling about why PoE is awesome, let’s go ahead and get the game installed on your Chromebook.

Chromebook system requirements to play Path of Exile

Path of Exile’s system requirements are pretty modest, but more Chromebooks can’t handle it.

Path of Exile is a pretty modern game that takes full advantage of multi-core processing and modern graphics cards.

Integrated graphics

As you probably know, Chromebooks aren’t exactly the most powerful laptops around.

As such, they don’t have dedicated graphics cards. The majority of Chromebooks run Intel HD Graphics, which is basically an integrated graphics card that’s shared with the CPU. It’s a co-processor- if you want to be precise.

Weak processors

And the majority of processors in Chromebooks aren’t too powerful either.

So, you need to make sure your specific model has decent hardware before attempting to do this. Or just do it anyway and try it. The whole “playing modern games on a Chromebook” thing is still a gray area.

It may work just fine with your older Chromebook if you adjust the in-game graphics a little. Then you’ll be playing PoE no problem.

How to install Path of Exile on a Chromebook

You can install Path of Exile on your Chromebook easily with this tutorial.

The guide will be divided into several parts. In essence, here’s what we’ll be doing:

Back up your stuff

Switch over to Developer Mode

Download Crouton

Install Linux

Download Lutris

Install Lutris

Install Path of Exile

Play!

To get this working, you’ll have to do the steps in order. Jumping around probably won’t work, unless you’ve already started and you’re looking for a path to continue on.

Anyway, now that you know the lowdown, how about we get to the auction process of installing Path of Exile on your Chromebook?

Let’s roll.

Backing up your data

It’s a good idea to back up your stuff before starting- it’ll all be wiped!

This is the first step before we switch on Developer Mode.

It’s important that you back up your data because once you get started, there’s no going back!

Turning on Developer Mode will wipe pretty much everything on your Chromebook’s hard disk so it’s just like it was restored to factory settings. So it’ll be like when you first booted it up- with nothing on the disk.

This means everything saved locally on your hard disk will be erased, including:

So if you have anything important you want to save from getting deleted, take this chance to back up your stuff!

You have a few options when it comes to saving your data.

Backing up to a cloud provider

You can easily save all your stuff to a cloud server like Google Drive or Dropbox– both of which are free to use (and can be upgraded to a premium plan should you need more space).

If you’ve never heard of cloud storage, it works just like a virtual external hard drive that’s always on and always accessible. You can access your data anywhere with an Internet connection and is also very secure.

Your data is “uploaded” to your cloud provider’s servers and you can access and “download” your data from their servers anytime you want. It’s pretty much like a NAS (Network Attached Storage) setup.

Backing up your data to an external storage device

You can also use the tried-and-true traditional storage medium as well.

Chrome OS is compatible with the majority of external drives (like external hard drives, thumb/flash drives, and SD cards). Just plug it in and launch the Files app using your Launcher. Navigate to the files you want to back up and transfer them over to the external storage.

I’m assuming you’ve done this before on a Windows or Mac (or Linux) computer, so you already know how to do it.

Enable Developer Mode

The first thing we’ll do is enable Developer Mode on your Chromebook so we can install Linux via Crouton. (You’ve backed up your Chromebook, right?)

We need to enable Dev Mode so we can get some more privileges to install third-party software. Turning on Dev Mode lets you do all sorts of things you couldn’t do before.

You can do stuff like play RuneScape, Minecraft, WoW, and even install Steam and Kodi. It’s disabled by default for security. But once you enable it, you enter a whole new world (of games).

So, let’s get started already.

Here’s how to enable Developer Mode:

Step 1: Press “ESC + Refresh + Power Button” together at the same time.

(The “ESC” key is at the far-left corner at the top. The “Refresh” key is where “F3” is on a traditional keyboard. The “Power Button” is at the far-right corner at the top.)

Your Chromebook will boot into Recovery Mode and restart itself. Note that on some older Chromebooks you may have to actually flip a physical switch on the side of the laptop in order to enable Dev Mode (such as the original ASUS Chromebook Flip).

But for most models, it should work just by pressing the keyboard combination.

Step 2: Press “CTRL + D” at the warning screen.

After it’s done booting up, you’ll see a warning screen that tells you that “Chrome OS is missing or damaged.” It’s not. This is just a generic warning message that can be safely ignored.

Go ahead press “CTRL + D” when asked to insert recovery media at this screen. The keyboard combination is hidden from view to prevent the clueless user from messing around.

As soon as you hit “CTRL + D” you’ll see another warning. Go to the next step.

Step 3: Press “Enter” to turn off OS Verification off.

You’ll want to keep OS Verification off. If it turns back on, you’ll essentially disable Dev Mode and you won’t be able to install Linux or run any commands in the command prompt.

Can’t get it working? Is your Chromebook automatically switching out of Developer Mode?

Note: Every time you boot up your Chromebook, you’ll likely see this warning screen. It’s important that you follow and press the right keyboard combinations to keep it in Dev Mode. If you press the wrong keys, Chrome OS will automatically revert out of Dev Mode and you’ll have to start all over from the beginning and enable it again.

It’ll also revert back to normal mode if you wait too long at the warning screen. It runs on a timer and if you don’t press anything in time, it’ll switch out of Developer Mode automatically.

If one day you start using your Chromebook and you can’t get Linux running or commands aren’t working from the command terminal, it’s likely that you’re no longer in Developer Mode and you’ll have to enable it again.

Now we can move onto getting Crouton to install Linux.

Downloading Crouton

Crouton is what will allow us to install Linux, which will allow us to install and run Path of Exile on a Chromebook.

Note: Be sure that it downloaded into the default “Downloads” folder on your Chromebook. If you download it to another folder, the commands won’t work in the later steps. Be sure it’s saved in the proper folder unless you know what you’re doing and willing to modify commands.

To keep things simple, we’ll be installing a basic copy of Linux Ubuntu with the Xfce desktop environment.

This is where the commands come in. Type the commands exactly as shown, without the quotations. And casing matters.

If you get an error, double-check your commands.

Step 1: Launch a shell by pressing “CTRL + ALT + T.”

Step 2: Type “shell” and hit Enter.

Step 3: Type in “sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -t xfce” and hit Enter.

Step 4: Wait for Linux to install.

Step 5: Answer the on-screen prompts. When it asks you to create a username/password, be sure that you write down your password. If you forget it later, you’ll have to start all over!

Note: As you input a password, you won’t see the cursor move and you won’t see any characters show up in the field. This is completely normal.

Step 6: After Linux has finished installing, you can launch Linux by typing “sudo startxfce4” and hitting Enter!

Getting an error?

If you’re an error like “ERROR: unknown command: shell” it means you’re not in Developer Mode.

Your Chromebook most likely reverted back out of it and you’ll need to enable it again. You can’t use “shell” commands if you’re not in Dev Mode.

That’s it. Linux should only take a few minutes to install depending on your Chromebook’s specs and your connection speed.

Again, be sure that you jot down your password. If you forget it, there’s no easy way to recover it and you’ll have to start over from the beginning.

Switching between Chrome OS and Linux

Linux will then boot up and you’ll be inside the desktop environment.

At this point, you’ll have both Linux and Chrome OS running at the same time.

You can instantly switch between them using the following keyboard commands:

Press “CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + Back Arrow” to switch to Chrome OS.

Press “CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + Forward Arrow” to switch to Ubuntu.

Note that the Back/Forward Arrows are on the top-row of your Chromebook’s keyboard- not the arrow keypad!

Now that you’ve gotten Linux installed, go ahead and play around it. Familiarize yourself with all the menus, icons, etc.

Next, we’ll install Lutris.

Installing Lutris

Lutris is a game library kind of like Steam. It lets you install Path of Exile on Linux.

Lutris is a game manager library similar to Steam that hosts dozens of popular games.

It makes them very easy to install, launch, and play on Ubuntu. You can play not only Path of Exile, but games like World of Warcraft, Minecraft, RuneScape, and more! All of this can easily be done on Lutris.

And it’s completely free to use as well!

It’s very similar to Steam and offers downloads for the most popular AAA titles. It includes both free and paid games. Paid games require your login details when you connect to that game’s server. It’s not shareware nor illegal to use Lutris.

You’re not pirating anything, so don’t be worried about copyright. If you need to pay for the game to play it, you’ll have to pay for it.

Their goal is to “Our goal is to support every game which runs on Linux, from native to Windows games (via Wine) to emulators and browser games.” This is taken from their official site.

To install Lutris, all you need to do is punch in some commands.

Launch the command prompt (“CTRL + ALT + T”) and type in the following commands. Remember, don’t type in the quotes and use proper casing!

After you set it all up, the only issue is disk space. Path of Exile is a huge game and most Chromebooks only have 16GB of available space, which isn’t enough. You can either Steam save the game to an external hard drive or other external storage to get around this.

When you add a game to Steam, it prompts you where you want to install it. Just choose the external drive.

About Andy Z.

Andy is a casual-hardcore Chrome OS fan and contributes to the site regularly. He likes computers, tech, sports cars, videogames, and of course, Chromebooks. Thinker. Introvert. Geek. You can find him on Twitter (@platytech), or send him an email (platy@platypusplatypus.com).